1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for use in, e.g., a video tape recorder (to be referred to as a VTR hereinafter) or a digital audio disk tape recorder (DAT) and, more particularly, to an apparatus for handling a plurality of cassettes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, long TV programs have been increased in number, and the number of midnight broadcast TV programs has been increased after the start of satellite broadcasting. Therefore, the recording mode of VTRs is being changed to a mode capable of performing timer or unattended recording or long-time recording.
Existing VTRs, however, can load only one tape cassette, and a recording capacity achieved without replacing a tape cassette is limited. In addition, the dimensional standard of cassettes brings about limitations in the formation of large-capacity cassette tapes. If a VTR is so constituted as to load a plurality of cassettes in order to solve the above problems, the size of the VTR itself tends to increase, and this increases the space occupied by the VTR. In addition, the operability of the VTR tends to deteriorate. For this reason, a demand has arisen for improvements in these problems.